by Eskil Engdal
In Ribeira Antonio “Tucho” Vidal Suárez is seated as usual at his favourite bar, the “Doble SS”, playing cards. In the premises there is as always an oppressive silence and suspicion when strangers enter. For years the Vidal shipping company has been able to loot the Antarctic without any intervention on the part of the authorities. They have been protected by regional policy, an antiquated body of laws and political horse trading in Brussels, Madrid and the capital of the province Santiago de Compostela to save the Galician fisheries industry. Now the game is presumably up for “Tucho”. The shipping company has been fined EUR 17.8 million for illegal fishing. When the authors meet “Tucho” in Ribeira in October 2016, a criminal case is pending. There the Guardia Civil has delivered its first blow. The court of justice has ruled that the Spanish authorities have so-called jurisdiction in the case. That means that the shipping company’s owners and employees can be penalized in Spain, even though the criminal acts they are charged with having committed have taken place in international waters. The Vidal family has appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court.
“I have nothing to say,” “Tucho” says from his seat on the outdoor patio of the Doble SS.
A few kilometres away, in a garden, the Thunder’s fishing captain Juan Manuel Patiño Lampon is preparing a fishing line. It is a magnificent villa with chandeliers and heavy furniture, situated in seclusion on a quiet street. According to the rumours, Lampon has started working for himself as an inshore fisherman. He does not look up from the line bins; he repeats only a monotone “never, never, never” when we ask to speak with him. Several of the other officers of the Thunder from Ribeira have been hired by other vessels. “Don’t bother my head with this,” or “I’m never going to talk” are the brief messages they give over the phone.
The Bob Barker’s first mate Adam Meyerson has been made captain of the Sea Shepherd’s campaign ship, the newbuilding the Ocean Warrior. The ship, with a price tag of USD 12 million and a maximum speed of all of 30 knots, is the environmental movement’s first specially built vessel and will be used in the fight against the Japanese whaling fleet, which has begun new missions in the Antarctic.
Captain Siddharth Chakravarty of the Sam Simon is taking a break from Sea Shepherd indefinitely and has started his own project, Enforceable Oceans.
When he left Hobart in search of the Thunder, Peter Hammarstedt hoped that Operation Icefish would be a turning point for Sea Shepherd. The Swedish captain wants a closer form of collaboration with the authorities, but Sea Shepherd’s violent past makes that extremely difficult.
“It’s better to cooperate with Interpol than to be hunted by them,” he told us during one of our many conversations.
Hammarstedt’s dream project has been to lend out Sea Shepherd’s ships to poor coastal nations that don’t have the resources to patrol their own waters. A few months after the sinking of the Thunder, Hammarstedt was back in the Gulf of Guinea. There he met Mike Fay, the American explorer who is a special advisor of the president of Gabon, and who promised to help Hammarstedt during the chase. Together they planned Operation Albacore, a step forward on the road to making Sea Shepherd a kind of coast guard force. In April 2016, the Bob Barker set out on a new mission. On board there were Sea Shepherd activists, fisheries officers and heavily armed soldiers. For five months, the Bob Barker patrolled the waters of Gabon and São Tomé in search of pirate fishermen. One of the vessels seized was a tuna fishing vessel owned by a shipping company in Galicia. In the cold storage rooms the soldiers and officers found thousands of fins from illegally caught shark.
In October Hammarstedt was invited to a conference on fisheries crime in Indonesia. In attendance were the officers and police who took part in the hunt for “The Bandit 6”. Sea Shepherd had been invited in from the cold.
A few weeks later, CCAMLR decided that an area of 1.55 million square kilometres by the Ross Sea in Antarctica was to be protected for the next 35 years. It is the world’s largest protected marine region.
At Christmas in 2016 the newspaper La Voz de Galicia reported that the Vidal family had won its Supreme Court appeal so the Guardia Civil will most likely have to drop the criminal case against the family. The reason for this is that the illegal fishing has taken place in international waters and the Vidal family can therefore not be punished by the Spanish courts. The open sea is still a wet Wild West and the toothfish is, in practical terms, up for grabs.
“Tucho” Vidal will be spared having to spend the years of his retirement in prison, but the fine of EUR 17.8 million for illegal fishing was still in effect when this book went to print.
When he read the news, Peter Hammarstedt sat down at his computer.
“The decision by the Spanish Supreme Court is as disappointing as the hard work of INTERPOL and Spanish law enforcement is inspiring. The ruling unfortunately sets the precedent that Spain is a safe place for criminals to organize and launder the theft of fish worth millions.
“However, the monster that is the Galician Mafia is still severely wounded, and while it licks its wounds, it does so knowing that if they resume their toothfish poaching operations in the future, then they do so under the watchful eye of police − who now understand their modus operandi better than ever before − and a proven commitment by Sea Shepherd to shut them down on the High Seas that the Spanish Supreme Court has surrendered to poachers,” he wrote in a message published on Sea Shepherd’s website.1
Then he wrote a message to the authors of this book:
“Kjetil & Eskil, had I been convinced that governments and courts of justice solved problems, I wouldn’t be doing the kind of work that I do.”
* * *
After the Thunder and the Viking sank, the Perlon was sold for scrap metal and the Kunlun, Songhua and Yongding were detained by authorities; most who had followed the chase of the “The Bandit 6” assumed that the pirate sextet was out of the game for good.
In March 2017 a ship agency in Sao Vicente on Cabo Verde received a letter from the company Pesca Cisne in Punta Arenas, Chile, regarding a vessel that had been detained on the island since Peter Hammarstedt spotted it by accident almost two years earlier.
“As you know, we are the new owners of the ship, which will be called Pesca Cisne 1. The vessel is currently docked in Sao Vicente and we would like to engage your services as our ship agent,” the letter written in Spanish read.
When it was chased in the Southern Ocean in 2015, the same vessel was called Songhua and was owned and operated by the Vidal family in Ribeira. The company in Chile who has now, according to the letter, bought the vessel, has since the late 1980s been owned by the family of Florindo González Corral from the small and unassuming town of O Carballiño in Galicia.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
One November day in 2014, we were discussing ideas for new articles for the Norwegian national daily newspaper Dagens Næringsliv. The conversation went something like this:
“Do you remember the two fishing vessels that were wanted by Interpol?”
“Yeah ...”
“What was it that actually happened?”
The work that led to writing this book began with one of journalism’s most fundamental questions. And although we weren’t aware of it, Peter Hammarstedt had just set his course for the Banzare Bank in search of the Thunder, the Viking and “The Bandit 6”. The documentary article about Hammarsted’s pursuit of the Thunder and our search for the ship’s owner in Galicia was one of the most read pieces in Dagens Næringsliv in 2015. A book deal followed, along with trips to five continents to speak with people who were involved in the story of the search for “The Bandit 6”.
It has been a long journey and there are many people who have helped us out along the way.
First, we give thanks to our bosses at Dagens Næringsliv, Gry Egenes, Frode Frøyland and Espen Mikalsen, who gave us the opportunity to work on the story for the newspaper – and who l
ater granted us leave so we could write this book. Our wonderful colleagues Kenneth Lund and Morten Iversen deserve a solid pat on the back for their interpreting and reporting assistance.
We owe a huge thanks to Frode Molven, editor at Vigmostad & Bjørke, for his belief in the project, especially when our own belief failed us. Rita G. Karlsson, at Kontext Agency in Stockholm, has done a fantastic job of selling the book to the rest of the world. Thank you!
The Sea Shepherd captain Peter Hammarstedt contributed above and beyond the call of duty. When we had received 500 emails, we stopped counting. Sid Chakravarty, Simon Ager, Alex Cornelissen and Michelle Mossfield at Sea Shepherd also deserve our thanks for making a contribution far beyond any reasonable expectation.
We give a huge thanks to all our sources who came through for us in Spain. A special thanks goes to journalist Victor Honorato and María José Cornax from the environmental organization Oceana. Victor accompanied us on our first trip to Ribeira, knocked on doors and made uncomfortable phone calls. María answered all of our more or less intelligent questions about the pirate syndicates, Spanish bureaucracy and the Spanish authorities’ unwillingness to take any action against the fisheries mafia in Galicia – up until the moment when they moved in with the big guns in 2015, to a large degree thanks to the tireless efforts of María and Oceana.
Special thanks also go to Tor Glistrup, Eve de Coning and Gunnar Stølsvik in Norway who gave us our first introduction to the work of combating international fisheries crime.
We are particularly thankful to Alistair McDonnell from Interpol’s Project Scale and Glen Salmon at AFMA in Australia who guided us, dug through archives and answered questions as far as their job descriptions would permit.
We have travelled far and wide in conjunction with the work on this book, but the trip to São Tomé and Príncipe is the one we remember best. We thank our interpreter Alex and the untiring manager of Sweet Guest House. The same holds for the adventurous and newlywed couple Aleksandra Dorann and Olof Van Winden. What a party!
In Oslo, the team at Visualdays, along with Tore Namstad, Morten Haug Frøyen and Anne Walseth all deserve our thanks for their advice, encouragement and overall goodwill.
The captain of the Kunlun, Alberto Zavaleta Salas from Peru, also merits a particularly honourable mention. He was the only officer on the pirate vessels who was brave enough to be interviewed on the record.
We have saved our biggest thanks for last: Fernando Manuel Toledo Oregon, the fearless optimist who travelled with us to Latin America when the book project was on the brink of falling apart, who certainly saved us from being robbed in Valparaiso and whose resolve did not waver when we knocked on the door of “Mr. Big” in Galicia. Muchas gracias!
And to Anne Grete Arntzen, Hilde Andersen and our children: thank you for putting up with all our madness.
The writing of this book was made possible by funding from the Fritt Ord foundation and the Norwegian non-fiction writers association (NFF). We are incredibly fortunate to have you. Thank you.
We will conclude with a well-known phrase: this is a documentary in which we describe real-life events to the best of our abilities. Any errors, omissions or misunderstandings are not the fault of our sources, but wholly our responsibility as the authors.
Eskil Engdal and Kjetil Sæter Oslo, December 2016
NOTES
2 “THE BANDIT 6”
1 Industrialized illegal fishing for the Patagonian toothfish began on a large scale off the coast of Chile and Argentina around 1990. When the authorities tightened up control measures and quotas, the fleet of trawlers and longline fishing vessels moved towards the British overseas territory of South Georgia, where the fishing was very good. When they were being hunted by the British in the mid-1990s, many of the same stakeholders popped up, first around the South African Prince Edward Islands, and subsequently in the French southern territories of the Kerguelen and Crozet Islands and the Australian Heard and McDonald Islands. After they were chased away by South African, French and Australian authorities, respectively, the first vessels were observed in international waters near the ice edge of Antarctica in January 2002.
2 Descriptions of the chase, Peter Hammarstedt’s preparations and his thoughts along the way, are based on interviews with Hammarstedt carried out in Bremen in April 2015, Southampton in January 2016 and Stockholm in September 2016. Background materials also include numerous emails, telephone conversations and WhatsApp messages from January 2015 and up until the time when the book went to press, transcripts of dialogue, sound recordings made on the bridge of the Bob Barker and information from the Bob Barker’s ship’s log. The authors also spent two days with the crew on the Bob Barker when they arrived in Bremen on 27 April 2015. At that time the majority of the crew had been at sea since 3 December of the previous year.
3 The Thunder, Viking, Kunlun, Yongding, Songhua and Perlon have changed names multiple times in the course of recent years. When Hammarstedt made his “The Bandit 6” poster, the Kunlun, Yongding and Songhua had other names – respectively, the Chang Bai, Chengdu and Nihewan. In the text the authors have consistently chosen to refer to each ship by a single name. The names chosen are the names the ships had when they were being chased in the Antarctic in 2014/2015.
4 The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) is based in Hobart in Tasmania and manages the so-called krill convention, which went into effect in 1982 and is a part of the Antarctic Treaty System. Twenty-four nations and the EU are members of CCAMLR, which provides annual guidelines, advising on the amount of fish that can be harvested in the area.
5 Interpol operates with several types of wanted alerts, which they call notices. The latter can be red, blue, green, yellow, black, orange or purple, depending upon the information Interpol is requesting. A Purple Notice was issued for the Viking and the Thunder, in which Interpol and the nation ordering the notice requested information from Interpol’s 190 member nations about a specific modus operandi – how the criminals were operating and how they tried to conceal their violations of the law.
6 George Forster (1777): A Voyage Round the World.
7 In the USA and Canada, Patagonian toothfish is sold as Chilean Sea bass, which is completely misleading since the fish is not a sea bass, and neither does it have any special connection to Chile. It was the American fish wholesaler Lee Lantz who came up with the name when he tried to market the fish in the USA in the late 1970s. The Chileans call the same fish bacalao de profundidad, in France it is called legine australe, in Spain and Japan it goes under the name of mero, while it is called merluza negra in Argentina, Peru and Uruguay. The Atlantic toothfish, which lives even closer to the Antarctic ice edge, is a closely related breed.
8 The quote is credited to the British restaurant critic and author Adrian Anthony Gill and cited in the article “How Prince Charles’ letters (almost) helped save the Patagonian toothfish”, written by Geoffrey Lean and printed in The Telegraph, 15 May 2015.
9 The Banzare Bank was named after Douglas Mawson’s expedition in 1929: The British Australian New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition.
3 OPERATION ICEFISH
1 The notices are controversial and, ironically, it is in France, where Interpol has its headquarters, that Watson may reside in exile undisturbed. Furthermore, the American authorities choose to overlook the notices.
2 There are several versions of this quote, cited in interviews with Paul Watson. The two James Bond actors Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan are both members of Sea Shepherd’s advisory board. Richard Dean Anderson, better known as MacGyver, Christian Bale, who played Batman in a number of movies, and William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk on Star Trek, have all previously been members of the same advisory board.
3 Paul Watson made a number of appearances in the Norwegian media in conjunction with the operation in Lofoten. He appeared on the programme “Antennetimen�
� of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), and he wrote a long letter to the newspaper Nordlys, in which he called himself an ambassador for the nation of sea mammals. Portions of the letter were printed in translation in Nordlys on 11 January 1993.
4 Whale Wars was a weekly documentary series that premiered in the autumn of 2008 and followed Sea Shepherd’s campaigns against the Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean. By 2015, Animal Planet had broadcast seven seasons of the series comprising a total of 63 episodes.
5 HOT PURSUIT
1 The doctrine of “hot pursuit” (the right to continuous pursuit) on the high seas grants a coastal state the right to pursue a vessel in international waters if there is suspicion that the crew has committed a criminal act within the nation’s territorial waters. The right is set out in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. In order for a pursuit to be defined as continuous in practical terms today the target cannot disappear from the pursuer’s radar screen.
6 OPERATION SPILLWAY
1 Project Scale is a part of Interpol’s division that combats environmental crime. The project was started 26 February 2013, and the first director was the lawyer Eve de Coning from Norway. Project Scale is funded by Norway, the USA and the Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts.
2 The centre of operations, also called CCC, is manned 24 hours a day, 365 days a year as a contact for member nations in need of immediate information or facing a critical situation. The headquarters are located in Lyon, but Interpol also has operation centres in Buenos Aires and Singapore.
3 Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing is often referred to as IUU fishing. Such fishing activity is illegal both if it violates laws established by a coastal state, and if it violates rules set out in the many international conventions regulating fishing in international waters. Fishing is considered unreported if there is a failure to report, if an incorrect report is made to the nation in which the vessel is registered, to the harbour where the fish is brought ashore or to a fisheries organization administrating fishing activities in international waters. Unregulated fishing is legal, but must take place in an unregulated area or for an unregulated species, or where there is no body of rules protecting the fish stock.